Nostalgia ain't what it used to be

Border Security, Immigration & Illegal Immigrants

Date: 01 July, 2006

By: Chief

nd the Congress is going ballistic over those three items. Over the past several weeks there has been little else in the news. The House members have submitted their conglomeration and so, too, did the Senate side of Congress. Which is where this non-crisis crisis now sits.

The whole reason for this non-crisis crisis is courtesy of this year being a mid-term election year. The Republicans want, as in the worst way, to maintain their majority in both Houses of Congress and the Democrats would like nothing better than to spank the Republicans back into being the minority party.

As usual, for Congress anyway, the initial idea was to generate a comprehensive immigration reform bill encompassing border security, legal immigration and the illegal immigrant problem. Then send it on its merry way to King George the Bush for, hopefully, his signature. Now if the king signed the bill into law the Republicans could holler that they, not the Democrats, are:

looking out for our National security,

Fixing the current immigration fiasco, and;

Getting rid of those pesky illegal aliens.

This whole play pretend crisis has, as we all know, led to demonstrations and numerous protests on both or all sides of the issues. Yet, as of the date of this story, Congress has yet to pull their collective heads out of their collective butts and actually do something constructive. All Congress is currently doing is watching which way the political winds are blowing.

I do agree that there is a border, immigration and illegal immigrant problem. I also agree that these three distinct problems need to be resolved. That is as far as my agreeing with the Congress goes.

What Congress does not seem to understand is that border security, immigration and illegal immigration are three different issues. Hence each of these issues must be handled separately. The comprehensive or the 'get a bigger hammer' method simply will not work. When you think about it, it never has.

Our Constitution does indeed grant to Congress the authority to do what needs to be done. Article I, Section 8 states:

"To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization [...][.]"

Further, Article IV, Section 4 states:

"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence."

The Congress is also attempting to prevent another criminally coward (terrorist) attack on our soil. That is the reason for the Section 4 quote.

The chicken or the egg

In this case the answer is quite simple. Our country cannot have a coherent law on immigration and another coherent law pertaining to illegal aliens until first and foremost we secure our borders. Period.

Securing our borders is not as easy as merely building a white picket fence. Just within the continental United States we have:

3,989 miles of land border with Canada, alongwith;

1,989 miles of land border with Mexico.

That, as you have noticed, does not even count our umpteen thousands of miles of continental shoreline.

Now add in:

Alaska,

The Aleutian Island chain which stretches 1,200 miles,

The Hawaiian Island chain which stretches 1,500 miles, and;

Trusts, territories and possessions.

Thousands upon thousands of miles of border. The vast majority of it is shoreline by the way. Comparatively speaking, securing our land borders are a walk in the park versus attempting to secure our shoreline.

Here is an example of what I mean. Back in 1993 a group of about 90 Chinese people attempted to enter the U.S. illegally. They sailed all the way from China and landed just south of a place called Moss Landing, California. Yes, they were caught. But their apprehension was not in anyway due to our federal government's border vigilance. It was solely due to a commercial fisherman taking his fishing boat out to sea for salmon season. He noticed them and called it in. We were lucky. The Chinese were not.

Thus, if we as a country are truly serious about securing our borders we cannot trust to luck.

If indeed we are determined to secure our borders a fence just ain't going to get the job done. I don't care if the fence is, as Senator Hillary Clinton recently said, a "smart fence." Sensors tend to get eaten alive in the heat and wind of the southwest. In the southwest, smart fences become extremely dumb extremely rapidly. And the fence itself will need a great deal of maintenance. Lastly, cutting through sections of fence in the remote southwest may not be the easiest thing to accomplish — but it can be done.

A wall on the other hand, similar to the Great Wall of China might do the trick. Maintenance will be reduced for one thing. For another, punching a hole through a 20 foot thick stone and reinforced concrete wall will be next to impossible. Further, depending upon the height and the materials used at the top of the wall scaling the wall would be very, very difficult indeed.

But, and make no mistake about this, nothing will ultimately prevent a person from entering this country illegally. All a wall will do is reduce the flow to hopefully a manageable level. It will not stop it.

As far as securing our shoreline all I can say is good luck. I say that because I do not believe that we can afford the number of Coast Guard personnel, their ships and other equipment to actually have a realistic shot at reducing the seaborne flow of illegal immigrants. The same holds true with the Border Patrol. This is not to mention trying to locate and stop some dirtbag coward who is attempting to sneak themselves or a weapon of mass destruction into this country.

Securing our borders shall become a truly daunting task — if it can be accomplished. Face it, our country has never attempted to secure our borders in anyway which could be considered serious.

Legal immigration

The current system is and has been broken for decades. There is nothing new or earth shattering about that. Over the years our Congress has patchworked our immigration laws so much and so badly that it now resembles a quilt the moths got ahold of. You can't fix something like that. You need to start from scratch.

One of the first things that needs to be done is to develop an immigration standard. Meaning that a person who desires to permanently immigrate to our country must meet certain minimum criteria. Should a family desire to immigrate, the adults must meet the criteria. The same, naturally, holds true with any other type or category of immigrant.

Second, we need to get rid of the umpteen types or categories of immigrants we allow in to the U.S. We need to streamline the system where it works for us — smoothly, simply, reliably and rapidly. It also needs to be uniform and, as such, uniformly applied to all would be legal immigrants.

Third, we need a reliable and rapid method of keeping track of categories of legal immigrants and foreign nationals visiting or living in our country. We don't have a system to do that yet and the results speak for themselves. Numerous 'over stayed' immigrants and foreign nationals. Some have over stayed their visa for decades. When an immigrant's or foreign national's visa has expired, they had better not still be in our country.

Fourth, Congress has got to stop mucking things up. Passing immigrant legislation which benefits corporations by allowing corporations to hire foreign nationals and bring them into our country to work (Silicon Valley does this a lot) at a lower wage, also known as H-1B holders, than their American counterpart is just one example of corporate purchasing power within the halls of Congress. And it is flat out wrong.

Those are just four examples of hundreds or possibly thousands of items which should be part of any decent immigration bill. Writing a new immigration bill will take quite a bit of time and a lot of research. It should. If Congress is actually going to do something about legal immigration they ought to do the job right — the first time. Regrettably, Congress has a history of never doing anything correctly the first time. Hell's bells, for that matter, Congress has a history of never doing anything right — period.

Illegal immigration

Is a crime, end of story. It is trespassing, no more, no less. It matters not a whit if those who trespass into our country do so for the most noble of reasons. Furthermore, it does not matter if said trespassers have become pillars of their community. They are, in point of fact, criminals. That said it is my feeling that those folks who entered our country illegally but have done well, ie., working, contributing to the community, no misdemeanors or felony crimes, etc., should be allowed to stay. Sure they should also have to pay some sort of penalty for illegal entry. But good people are not that easy to come by.

The flip side of the coin is this — anyone who entered our country illegally and commits either a misdemeanor or a felony should:

Do the jail time,

Be booted out of the country, and;

Never to be allowed to reenter the U.S.

Harsh lessons tend to make for long memories after all.

Yet our Congress, the Senate in particular, is thinking that granting amnesty to umpteen millions of criminals is really a jolly good idea. Talk about a slap in the face to all those immigrants who spent years and thousands of dollars to immigrate to this country legally. It is wholly disgusting what our Senate is doing. The Senate's version of the bill is also a huge black eye to each and every American citizen who busts their ass everyday and who pay the taxes which make our country operate. These same taxes, by the way, pay the salaries and numerous perks of the asshole Senators who have, by this bill, told We the People to go fuck ourselves.

Lou Dobbs of CNN has an interesting take on this latest Senate perversion:

"Illegal aliens are more important to this Congress than securing our borders and our ports, more important than those legal immigrants who have waited in line and who follow the law. The Senate has added to the litany of lunacy that makes up what it calls reform: Illegal aliens would only have to pay back taxes on three of the past five years, they will not be prosecuted for felonies such as identity theft or purchasing or using fraudulent Social Security cards, and unlike millions of visa holders who have to leave the country to have them renewed, they may simply remain in the United States while this Congress and this president give away all the benefits and privileges of American citizenship.

"This is an outright assault in the elitist war on the middle class. And working men and women who've already borne the pain of losing good-paying manufacturing jobs and having middle-class jobs outsourced to cheap foreign labor markets are faced with the onslaught of more illegal immigration and cheap labor into the American economy. This president and Congress talk about bringing illegal aliens out of the shadows while they turn out the lights on our middle class."

In other words only major corporations stand to benefit from this piece of legislative garbage. Cheap labor sums it up quite nicely.

Both New Mexico U.S. Senators, Bingaman, a slimeball Democrat and Domenici, a slimeball Republican, have stated that while the bill "isn't perfect" it is better than the "current broken system." I disagree. Additionally or unfortunately, our governor, Bill 'Hot Rod' Richardson, says the legislation is a step in the right direction. I just wonder what major corporations have been bribing those three scumbags? I will tell you this much, Bingaman and Hot Rod are both up for reelection this year and Domenici in another two years. Would you care to guess what three slimebags I shall not be voting for? I didn't think so.

Some of our citizens have decided to take matters into their own hands and really let these slimebags, I mean Senators, know how the cow ate the cabbage. They are mailing bricks to these bought and paid for jerks. The purpose of the bricks, to quote Pink Floyd, is nothing more or less than "another brick in the wall." Hopefully the Senate shall listen, though I doubt it.

We, as a country, need to take care of our own citizenry first and foremost.